The Years of Rice and Salt: A Novel

This book is interesting, but flawed. The premise, that Christian Europe was wiped out in Tne Black Death and the world became dominated by Muslim and Buddhist culture make it fasinatong.
Each segment can stand up on it's own as a story. Each has a different style and the convention of reincarnation as a thread throughout the book give it some continuity. So, in these areas the book has much to offer in terms of philosophy and theology.
However, the book has two flaws that make it a bit hard to read.
One, is the lack of developement on the new world, America as we know it. Perhaps Robinson plans more in another book, but, the lack of developement makes it feel like something is missing.
Second, the lack of a good timeline to correlate events taking place in our Christian calender made for slow reading. I know that this is Alternative History, But, unless you are a real history buff, when things are happening would become confused here. By the way, the leaps into time would be easier to take with a time line. When did the Modern era begin and how?
So while I think there is a lot to reccomend in this book, make sure you have a good time line and a sense of imagination. Wthout them, you may get a little lost.

Not at all interesting, but a good concept. Gives an alternative history of the world where Europeans all died out around 1400. It reads like a dull history book, which can be alright if your reading actual history. It is a terrible bore when it is make believe history and not worth following. There are about a dozen sections where each tell a story of a particular era, some are not too bad. These chapters are linked by some type of reincarnation of re-occuring souls, but at least to me it was not apparent how specific characters tract from one section to the next, and if it were apparent I do not think the book would be any more interesting. A lot of pseudo religion

Reading the summary of this book, it sounded really quite interesting. European society had been killed off by plague and thus Islamic and Chinese societies were the dominant ones on Earth. The book was divided up amongst several stories detailing various time periods and the ways in which scientific discoveries - flight, gunpowder, trains, telescopes, etc were "discovered" in this alternate history. But these stories just got boring and I found myself wanting to skip large sections of them in the hope that the book would get better, unfortunately it didn't.

This was painful to read, poorly written, rambling, and largely uninteresting.
The main characters keep changing as they are reincarnated, so even character development is poor. It's a bogus world history of religious and race wars, injustice, etc, with characters you don't care about. It was an interesting premise, very poorly written.

It's a shame that the editor didn't have the balls to tell the author try again. No way would this have ever been published if it had been his first book. Robinson has done some awesome writing, and I'm a fan, but this should never have been published.

This is NOT science fiction. It's crap.

I got just short of halfway through this book and couldn’t bring myself to continue with it. The theory is great, what happened if Europe’s population was decimated from the black plague leading to the rise in influence of people from the middle east and far east, but the execution was lacking. The author seemed to go into too much detail (that didn’t add to the plot), that it often felt as if the plot was lingering. After a while I just stopped enjoying it.

The book starts off slow and only gets slower. As an alternate history novel, Robinson has a lot of time to get through. In an attempt to create some continuity of characters he implements a reincarnation mechanic in which the same souls are spun out into the world over and over. This might have worked except the characters never go anywhere or do anything interesting. In the few cases that they start to get interesting, the chapter suddenly ends with a summary and then that version of the character is dead and on to the next boring one. So far: no character development, no plot, little to no action.

Next up the premise of the book quickly becomes less than interesting. With Western civilization dead the world is taken over by Chinese, Indians, Muslims and Native American's. The cultures don't really evolve much though, and historical development takes place mostly as implausible events/discoveries that server as a sort of nudge nudge wink wink of their real world counterparts without any sense of novelty. In that sense the book never really makes it past the premise before losing any and all creativity.

Finally, as the book progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the point of the book is not to make an interesting alternate history and is instead just a vehicle to pass judgement on mankind's past and shove the authors political views down the readers throat. Not only does this result in the reincarnated characters being rubber stamp talking pieces, but his political views are rather disconnected from reality and are grounded in a rather naive idealism completely divorced from human nature and practical application. The short summary: He's a radical feminist (of the man hating variety), a communist, and an atheist (of the religion sucks and is the source of all evil kind). He goes to great lengths in his alternate history to showcase and vilify what he believes are the sources of evil in our world (more and more nonsense about patriarchs, damn those laws, all men are evil thugs, etc.) very much to the detriment of the story. While all of those things could serve as a source of struggle, the characters instead do little more than reflect on them so the author can say more of what he thinks about such things. He also seems to think anyone who is poor is living a "meaningless existence" compared to rich people and, like most patriarchy theory lovers, takes the insanely misogynistic view that women have had no meaningful contribution to human history (he makes some token contributions for them in his alternate history, but makes it clear he doesn't think they did anything useful beyond pushing out babies in the real world).

In the 14th Century CE, the Black Death wiped out roughly 1/3 of the world population -- and up to 60% of all people in Western Europe -- and changed world history. But what might have happened to the world had the Plague been more severe? In The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson posits a world in which some 90% or more of the population is dead, Europe is utterly depopulated, and the survivors are concentrated in Eastern Asia.

It's an ingenious and startling premise. Seriously, think about it. Christianity and Judaism, gone as practiced religions, and scarcely even mentioned except as footnotes in a history book. No Shakespeare, no Queen Elizabeth, no daVinci, no Van Gogh, no Mozart, Columbus, Magellan, Rembrandt, Dumas, Jefferson, Franklin, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler.... the list of never-to-exist Eurocentric artists, authors, explorers, and other world shapers is virtually endless.

Instead, Robinson introduces us to a world gradually explored and settled by Asian peoples. In keeping with a common theme of Eastern religions, he uses the plot device of reincarnation to tell his story. From a primitive village on the steppes of Mongolia to a 100-story highrise in Burma, centuries later, each character returns in the next cycle, to learn more, to grow more, to be reunited with each other time and again, and to gradually learn to recognize each other, at least a little.

It's a fabulous premise. I wish I had liked its execution more.

Robinson's style is bone-dry and stultifying. Even his romance and battle scenes are presented at an objective distance, lacking all blood and passion. I plodded through this book, one sere paragraph after another, and only finished it out of sheer stubbornness, as in: "By God, I've spent three weeks reading this thing, I'll be damned if I give up on it now.") In the end, what kept me going was drawing parallels between the book's characters and our world's key historical figures. ("Okay, this woman would be Marie Curie in our world," and so forth.)

This isn't to say it's badly written. It isn't. It's beautifully written; it had to be to make me stick with it for nearly 700 pages. Deserts are beautiful, too. I'm still awfully glad when I leave the desert and am free to travel somewhere else.

Absolute rubbish. There's no story line and the characters are all mixed mixed up. With a bunch of crazy religious junk on top. This is not a novel. Just crazy ramblings? I'm sorry I wasted time reading it.

Kim Stanley Robinson, best known for his Mars trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars, is a fascinating author, capable of challenging readers to think not about what it means to be human, but what it means to exist altogether. In The Years of Rice and Salt, he rises to majestic heights and delivers a story worthy of much praise.

The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history unlike any other. Re-imagining how the world would have progressed if Europe had been wiped out by the Black Death in the fourteenth century. The most amazing aspect of the novel, however, is how it tries not to present itself like an alternate history. Instead, Robinson allows readers to live in an entirely different world, where Europe has different names, like Firanja and Al-Andalus, instead of Spain, England or France. He also allows readers to easily understand the locations of a story by using names that are familiar from ancient history, like Mecca, Inka, Burmese and Arabia. But the world Robinson has created is entirely believable, and educational.

In The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson challenges his readers to reexamine their viewpoints on many topics: life and death, reincarnation, religion, philosophy, science, and even the place of women in society. Rarely does a work so thought-provoking come around.

Robinson uses a different method for conveying his story throughout the novel, which consists of ten `books'. We are introduced to many `characters' which all share the same souls throughout multiple lives. His jati, meet up with each other in life after life, which he details in the novel.

Though their names all begin with the same letter in each life, their situations rarely mirror their previous incarnations. Readers are treated to living the life of a tiger through the eyes of one, and on the effect humans have on the nature surrounding them. It's an interesting storytelling method seldom seen working so well. Though confusing at times, especially at the beginning, Robinson's use of the bardo separates the lives nicely.

Nevertheless, this novel takes time to ingest. Spanning over 750 pages, and having no true climax--an interesting theme in Robinson's books--the novel is not a huge page-turner. In fact, readers may find themselves rather confused in the early pages, and not very interested until the birth of science in Samarqand. The development of weaponry and combat is especially interesting, since it mirrors our own history so well. Indeed, it's intriguing to see how many things could be so very similar. Several times, readers may find themselves thinking of a character as the equivalent of our Einstein, or understanding that scientists are working on a nuclear bomb, though the terms are all different.

Robinson does an excellent job weaving together an interesting, thought-provoking journey through history, beginning with the death of a warlord, and moving through the discovery of the `New World' by the Chinese, who land on the west coast-which seems decidedly odd. Also interesting is the development of China into the largest power in the world.

Overall, The Years of Rice and Salt has something for everyone, but commands great respect from all. This is one of those novels that can cause some very long, very heated and opinionated discussions. It may also cause some good to come, if people act on the messages it conveys. It challenges readers' ideas of religion, society, government, and even our daily views of the world.

This book cannot be more highly recommended, and sits beside Kim Stanley Robinson's other work as continuing the very best in science fiction.

Speculating about changes in history is always kind of a fun game and not automatically restricted to Friday night frat party activities for drunken history majors. SF has always kind of let itself nod toward the notion of "everything is different now!" and once you've spent your time extrapolating into a far future, casting the lens back to see how the world would be different if, say, nobody invented boats until fifty years ago isn't too much of a stretch. While this kind of writing doesn't generally get pegged as "SF" because it doesn't have spaceships and aliens, the genre has sort of co-opted it as a sub-genre. Once "Man in the High Castle" came out, no one wanted to let it be the only girl at the party (although "Bring the Jubilee", a novel where the South won the Civil War, came out slightly earlier, and I'm sure there are even earlier examples).

Most of those novels, however, aren't big sweeping attempts to gauge the span of history, or if they are they tend to ignore the personal side of things and focus on becoming an alternate history textbook. What Kim Stanley Robinson has decided to do here is craft an epic, showcasing hundreds of years of changes that stem from a single thing gone different, and yet give us a ground level view of history at the same time. It's a meaty tome, over seven hundred pages in paperback and covering lots of ground, not only in events but philosophically as well. Featuring a cast of dozens and more wrong history than a century's worth of college level April Fool's jokes can manage, he makes a good case how a single plausible event can alter the trajectory of the world. But does it work as a story as opposed to an intellectual exercise?

Y-e-s. As in "almost". He kicks things off in the nether regions of history, as the Mongols come to invade only to discover that the Black Plague basically killed everyone in Europe. Meaning that without Christianity to pop up and become dominant, the world has plenty of room left for Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists to take over, with the American Indians eventually joining the fray. To keep matters consistent, he comes up with the concept of having the same people get reincarnated constantly through history, having the same first letter of their names repeat so you can figure out who is who and seeing how their personalities remain the same throughout time. Thus we get to see Muslim influence grow and flower, the Chinese entering North America first, India becoming far more of a power and Japan apparently getting the shaft, as Caucasians become a definite minority and Europeans and their quaint stories about that Jesus guy becoming a fond myth. But, hey, they sure were fun while they were around, right?

As it plays out, it doesn't so much give us a glimpse of a novel as a series of short stories with characters that we're told are the same but don't seem to act like they know each other until they're dead. In fact, sometimes it seems like the sections were all written separately with the same theme and assembled for the novel (the first section alone feels utterly different than what follows, and its constant telling us to read the next chapter gets so annoying that I'm surprised no one told him to remove it). Dropping in and out of history gives us the constant chance to play catch-up as we try to figure out what changes were taking place in the interim. Yet because the characters are so ground-level, we often don't get a good view of the rest of the world simply because their mobility is so limited, especially in olden times when camel was your only means of transportation. Which is realistic but at times can blunt your knowledge of what's been happening, meaning that unless you are a history scholar (or have a good general background in world history), a lot of the subtle changes are going to be lost on you.

The reincarnation theme tends to hamstring the book, as the scenes in the bardo for some reason feel flippant and out of place, fantasy intruding into a book that is otherwise fairly realistic. Instead of achieving a poetic approach to the reincarnation concept (like Yukio Mishima did in his Sea of Fertility quartet, granted the themes are night and day here) it gets treated matter of factly as the characters randomly discover they've had other lives (and then die anyway) or just blithely go on without realizing it. Which gives us very little in terms of emotional arcs, we're watching events happen just as the characters are but without any pieces of them to anchor us on either end, we're dropping by to watch them for a few months or years before popping off again.

Don't get me wrong, some parts are great. The early scenes of an eerie empty Europe are chilling. The book for me doesn't quite start to pick up until the Chinese reach North America because that's the first time things feel really different. From then on things tend to steamroll (although the Alchemist section is great fun, with an ending that is either the epitome of bleak or Robinson indulging in really dark humor) and it becomes fascinating to watch as the world divides itself along ethnic lines (as another reviewer notes, without a melting pot country like America, everyone tends to stick to their own side of the dancehall). Robinson seems to suggest that the problems that can plague those countries in the here and now would still trouble them (for one, Islam still struggles against the more radical elements of itself, and China has issues with how the government oppresses the citizens) and the world doesn't seem better as differently shaped. There's a Long War that ends poorly for everyone, but atomic weapons don't seem to be a factor.

But as the book wheels toward its end it becomes much more interested in debating historical philosophy, especially in its last two sections, and we don't get history as much as people talking about history, as the characters espouse a near utopian ideal that seems to be based around a benign reading of socialism (amusingly, rich people have got it made in this world too, which at least proves why no one ever likes the rich) and trying to push the world into a better state. The last section manages to pull out of that with a few autumnal scenes of a world with a different flavor to what we know, but if you're expecting a culmination of sorts you'll have to look elsewhere. History has its own messy facets but the book doesn't so much conclude as much as pick a place to stop, with the implication we've seen enough and its going to go on without us. How satisfying you find that may depend on your view of history, whether it matters that we're all on this planet clearly going somewhere and building toward an ideal, or what matters is our day to day plodding to keep ourselves content in our own little slice of this life. Both views, in their way, are probably okay, I'm just not sure what kind of story that makes.

In this alternate history, KSR demonstrates great wit and imagination. He trips in places - losing focus on the real story or drifting off into meandering details - but he does pretty well considering what he sets out to do. Overall, I enjoyed the journey, though there are some changes that could have made it much better.

- He could have spent more time in a narrative mode to explain the large scale historical and cultural shifts taking place. He does this through his characters, but it's hard to get a real sense of scale through a few sets of eyes in one part of the world. There are one or two times where he spends a few pages covering the events of a several decades with a piece of narration and I thought those bits really helped to frame the story.
- He could have made better use of his reincarnated cast of characters. He has around 6 reincarnated characters, and each has a varying level of importance to the story. There was too much focus on the K and B characters, and too little on the others. The I character gets some time, but S, P, and Z make mostly inconsequential appearances and we never get a good sense of them as entities.
- He could have used a little more good editing. The book is too long and he drags on in places or gets flowery. The content didn't justify the word count. For example, the development of Middle East alchemy into science gets way too much time. The characters make dozens of groundbreaking scientific discoveries in offhand observations, yet the section is still unnecessarily long and would have been better served by broader strokes. Yet he misses a huge opportunity by blowing through a section where a samurai comes to the Americas to teach the Native Americans to defend against the invading Chinese. Sometimes his prose is clearly reaching for a bit too much poetry and transcendence, yet the individual stories fail both to support their own narrative arcs or meld into a more cohesive overarching plot.

Still, the concept is brilliant and I enjoyed reading. It just happens to be written a little problematically.

What's evident in Rice & Salt is the attention to detail and depth in which Robinson is known for. It's accompanied by the additional facet of ingenuity where Robinson has taken the liberty to develop a world (culturally, technologically, etc.) where the Chinese, Islamists, Hindus and Native Americans have canvassed the world. Although the Caucasians have largely been extinct due to the 99% lethal black plague, they do make brief cameos to some plots. However, Robinson's attentiveness to detail takes center stage to such a degree that characters are mowed over by the sheer immensity. Brilliant plots, a behemoth of originality but the revolving door of karma doesn't develop the characters and relationships thereof to much extent.

What was sorely lacking from this alternative history novel was its connectiveness with Earth's natural timeline: No mention of Haley's Comet? Krakatoa? Or other such natural disasters/phenomena which would have taken place regardless of human activity? Without the link to natural history, the entire basis of the alternative history feels displaced, outside of Earth's own history.

Book 1: Awake to Emptiness - Circa 1362 AD - Live as a slave, enter the Forbidden Palace as a eunuch and pay back in kind with assassination. 88 pages

Book 2: The Haj in the Heart - Circa 1549 AD - Leave the Mideast to settle in the recently wiped clean southern Europe continent. 100 pages

Book 3: Ocean Continents - Circa 1609 AD - Lost at sea, a Chinese vessel lands in Native America but leaves behind a trail of tears. 48 pages

Book 4: The Alchemist - Circa 1629 AD - Scientists near the Khyber Pass takes numerous strides in advancing the sciences. 120 pages

Book 5: Warp and Weft - Circa 1769 AD - Native Americans convene to establish a union of people and trade. 38 pages

Book 6: Widow Kang - Circa 1789 AD - Upheaval in China reveals the loyalty of residents, both Chinese and Japanese. 82 pages

Book 7: The Age of Great Progress - Circa 1860 AD - Sub-continental India unveils itself to be a scientific and military powerhouse. 72 pages

Book 8: War of the Asuras - Circa 1912 AD - Cultures at war- Chinese, Indian, Native American and Arabs. 34 pages

Book 9: Nsara - Circa 1979 AD - Restless Chinese culture, seeds of dismay and progressive education reap revolution. 124 pages

Book 10: The First Years - Circa 2002 AD - Burma emerges as cultural and geographic crossroads; center of industry and intellect. 56 pages

Kim Stanley Robinson's book follows a small group through a half millenium of alternate history, from when the Black Death wipes out most of Europe to roughly the present time. The changes to history are interesting, as Far and Middle Eastern civilizations develop toward global dominance without European influence or constraint. But this re-imagined history isn't the book's strength.

We experience the altered centuries not through dry narration, nor through the eyes of a streaming cast of unrelated characters. Instead we learn how the East forms history from a handful of individuals who live, die, and are reborn without awareness of their previous lives. Although their circumstances change, core aspects of their personalities persist across lifetimes--as does their connectedness, their chance to interact and influence each other. In each generation we find our recurring characters and see what they must confront and conquer in themselves. From the patterns across lifetimes--and brief group "meetings" between reincarnations--we absorb an Eastern perspective on the great wheel of existence.

Science fiction is at its best when it offers something new--a technological advance, an alien species, an altered history--and explores the implications. This book's offering is a cyclic, Eastern view of existence. It was not invented by the author, but he makes it emotionally accessible to Western readers. The lack of any satisfactory conclusion to the book is unimportant, and even somewhat consistent with this worldview.

You should read this book for the journey, not the destination. Absorb a different view of the purpose of life and what it may mean to make progress as a person. You need not change your philosophy as a result. But you may find it easier to understand others who live outside it. And if you enjoy following these characters through the long paths of their history, you may also want to read Poul Anderson's Boat of A Million Years. It contains similar ideas about what different personalities may learn from the deep currents of time.

Kim Stanley Robinson's book follows a small group through a half millenium of alternate history, from when the Black Death wipes out most of Europe to roughly the present time. The changes to history are interesting, as Far and Middle Eastern civilizations develop toward global dominance without European influence or constraint. But this re-imagined history isn't the book's strength.

We experience the altered centuries not through dry narration, nor through the eyes of a streaming cast of unrelated characters. Instead we learn how the East forms history from a handful of individuals who live, die, and are reborn without awareness of their previous lives. Although their circumstances change, core aspects of their personalities persist across lifetimes--as does their connectedness, their chance to interact and influence each other. In each generation we find our recurring characters and see what they must confront and conquer in themselves. From the patterns across lifetimes--and brief group "meetings" between reincarnations--we absorb an Eastern perspective on the great wheel of existence.

Science fiction is at its best when it offers something new--a technological advance, an alien species, an altered history--and explores the implications. This book's offering is a cyclic, Eastern view of existence. It was not invented by the author, but he makes it emotionally accessible to Western readers. The lack of any satisfactory conclusion to the book is unimportant, and even somewhat consistent with this worldview.

You should read this book for the journey, not the destination. Absorb a different view of the purpose of life and what it may mean to make progress as a person. You need not change your philosophy as a result. But you may find it easier to understand others who live outside it. And if you enjoy following these characters through the long paths of their history, you may also want to read Poul Anderson's Boat of A Million Years. It contains similar ideas about what different personalities may learn from the deep currents of time.

This unusual alternate history is probably the best written of Robinson's books. The basic premise is that the Black Death extirpates the population of Europe, eliminating Europe and Christianity from human history. Robinson then presents a series of historical episodes from the point of divergence to the equivalent present laying out the trajectory of the alternate history. Continuity of themes and characters is maintained with a surprisingly effective plot device, a set of recurring characters carried from episode to episode through Buddhist concepts of reincarnation. These characters are usually struggling to improve humanity and escape the wheel of reincarnation. Robinson presents alternative discoveries of the Western Hemisphere by the Chinese, an alternative scientific revolution in Islamic Central Asia, an alternative industrial revolution in South India, and an alternative 20th century world war. There is some mixture of Robinson's concept of human historical progression and Buddhism. Perhaps a bit long but consistently enjoyable.

Subject-wise, _The Years of Rice and Salt_ pushed all the right buttons for me - opening with a Journey to the West pastiche was always going to score it points, then there was a section set in Samarkand, quotations from Ibn Khaldun, and some deftly-drawn portraits of medieval China. I'm a sucker for a) cleverness, and b) well-crafted settings outside the pseudo-medieval fantasy norm, and this book hits both markers. So I wanted desperately to like it. In some ways, I did.
But there are two fundamental flaws, in my opinion. Firstly, the device of reincarnating the same set of characters fails; none of said characters are distinctive or memorable enough from life to life, and so end up being effectively 'new' in every section/time period. There's little chance for the reader to develop any emotional investment before the section ends and the whole thing starts again, and it becomes difficult to truly care.
Its second problem is, curiously, its lack of scope and vision. While the novel's stage is an entire world over six or so centuries, the device of keeping the characters together in each incarnation means that each section concentrates on one small area, robbing the narrative of the benefits of multiple, varied viewpoints. The scale is narrow rather than epic, and the action tends to get bogged down in details. This would be fine if the details were used to build character or illuminate the larger picture - the themes of this alternate, Europe-less world - but a lot of it reads like navel-gazing.
Many of the truly interesting implications are skipped over in favour of scientists ahead of their time discovering exactly the same things at almost exactly the same time their counterparts did in the non-fictional world, as if Robinson feels that certain universal boxes must be checked along the road to 'development', whatever the structure or imperatives of a society. (Meanwhile, literature, drama and art get short shrift). Often even the same words are used - I know little about the history of scientific thought, but would a world whose development was shaped by Arabs and Chinese still have used so many Greek and Latinate constructions to label their deeds? (okay, so he can get away with Greek, Islamic scholars were big on Greek. but still).
While there are glimpses of greater things - Buddhist attitudes and beliefs are used very well, and the different trajectory of American history is intriguing, but frustratingly underexplored - Robinson seems to be more interested in following a pretty conventional path. Perhaps dictated by his reincarnation device, he surrenders to the temptation to work towards a conclusion, as if human history could have ultimate purposes or goals. (I imagine one could argue that this reflects the world-view of those he writes about, but intentional or not it doesn't work!). Ultimately, this is too big a topic for one novel, and in trying to cover everything the author spreads himself too thinly, and ends up short-changing a fascinating world.
Despite these caveats, this remains a hugely enjoyable and memorable read, a rich tapestry of cultures and ideas rarely explored in genre fiction. Worth a look.

As stated by many others, the premise is intriguing, but it fails to deliver what it promises. The opening chapter is gripping, from its goose bump-inducing title of "Awake to Emptiness" to the description of a desolate and plague-ridden land, to the amazing scope of the adventures of its characters. I found the book enthralling at first, and somewhat interesting all the way through Warp and Weft, at least it seemed to be building toward a world-changing/shaping climax. Simply consider; no Europeans: a complete and total elimination of the pressures applied to the rest of the world by the authors of the crusades, the inquisition and imperialism. Yet the world created by the author does not really change. The fact that no change was forthcoming appeared first in the dreadful chapter Widow Kang and continued all the way until the pathetic attempt at closure in The First Years. As I finished the book, I was left scratching my head wondering if the author underwent a life-altering experience or a drastic change in his diet that could account for the complete collapse of such a promising story.

The writing is still strong and I even understand the concept of reincarnation as a vessel of returning the basic characters over the ages as a means of attaining some semblance of cohesiveness; otherwise the book could easily be a collection of short stories set in an alternate world. However this reincarnation theme is not just a stylistic tool but a recurrent philosophy of the author which further fuels a cyclical plot devoid of historical change. Simply put, this makes for boring reading. I will not presume to add to the detailed reviews already here which discuss all the little historical details that the author overlooked, but consider that this is an alternative history novel, and just because we like a particular event or are interested in a group of people does not mean that they must have played an important role in this version of history. However, it is highly naïve to believe that the defining events of world history progress unaltered despite the eradication of an entire continent. I am just speculating here, but I think the book falters in its later half because the author declines to choose sides in answering a simple question: Would the world be a better place with or without European/Western influences? This is a loaded question, but the premise of this book demands its answer, instead we are left with a world almost exactly the same as what we have now. For someone who expected intelligent and imaginative alternative history, this proves to be disappointing.

If you haven't considered the impact of the plague on history consider this: in 1630, the plague wiped out most of the population of Milan, decimating it from a city of about 250,000 to 60,000 souls. (Interestingly, cloistered nuns were among those who survived, having been efffectively quarantined. They preserved a great deal of the cultural knowledge that was passed down.)
Now, what if the plague had wiped out 99% of Europeans, and in their place, the Asian empires became the dominant culture of Earth? Kim Stanley Robinson examines this horrifying and alluring hypothesis.

One challenge the author dealt with was the great span of time the novel encompasses--700 years. He treats each chapter as a novella, and this is perhaps what makes Years of Rice and Salt so successful; the novella, handled well, is one of science fiction's best genres. The novel gives thought to the question "Would we get a utopia instead of what we DID get, if Europe had been erased from history?" Interesting question!

In Robinson's vision, the world is turned topsy-turvy; colonization happened from Asia instead of Europe, so the New World was settled from west to east, not east to west. The dominant religions are Islam and Buddhism; Christianity is relegated to a historical footnote. The great science of India is not forgotten as it is today, but comes to full flower. Dynasties that never were rise and fall. What a marvelous canvas for a novel!

(3.5 stars) Imagine, for a moment, that western civilization not only did not evolve as we know it today, but that, in fact, it never existed at all. This intriguing speculation is the underlying premise of a novel which forces the reader to rethink all the assumptions with which we habitually evaluate the past--the "givens" through which we interpret events. Robinson presupposes that virtually all the inhabitants of Europe were wiped out by a plague in the fourteenth century and the continent left uninhabited. But this was not the end of the world, nor was it the end of learning and "progress." Life continued, but all the intellectual developments arose out of the Muslim states, China, India, and eventually the North America of the Native Americans.

Alternating workman-like prose with prose "poems" and, occasionally, stories and legends, Robinson crafts a fast-paced history of a different world, creating two characters who appear and reappear in different incarnations from 783 a. H. (after Hegira), roughly the late 14th century, to the present day. Keeping basically the same personalities, regardless of their incarnations, Bold Bardash (Bihari, Bistami, Butterfly, Bahram, etc.) and Kyu (Kokila, Kya, Katima, Kheim, etc.) travel through time, experiencing life under the Mongols, Indians, early Chinese emperors, Muslim leaders, and Japanese sailors during their discovery of the New World.

Some episodes are much more vivid, and ultimately more enlightening, than others, and as the cultures are brought to life, along with their different views of man's place in the universe, Robinson shows how the desire to impose one's own religion or beliefs on the outside world is the basis of some of the cruelest violence throughout history. Ultimately, the Great War, lasting sixty-seven years and costing one billion lives, pits the rulers of Dar al-Islam against the Travancori League (India), China, and the Hodenosaunee League (Native America).

While it is intriguing to contemplate alternative history, Robinson's goal--the alternative history of the entire world for the past six hundred years is an enormous subject, one which, because of its breadth and scope seems to lose focus and pace as the book progresses. And while the reincarnations of Bold and Kyu help to bridge many gaps and avoid some problems of character development, the device becomes a bit tired by the end. Still, in showing us how all aspects of our current knowledge might have developed in other societies if western civilization had not existed, Robinson goes a long way toward reducing intellectual arrogance and increasing empathy for other cultures. Despite the book's limitations, Robinson succeeds in creating an alternative history which offers much food for thought and considerable narrative excitement. Mary Whipple

Stan Robinson, by his own testimony, prefers to write hard SF and generally shies away from fantasy. It is, therefore, either a great surprise or no surprise at all that his most ambitious alternate-history novel is deeply informed by a theme of reincarnation, and that this makes the book the success it is.

An alternate-history story covering, as this one does, more than 700 years of history, has the built-in problem of a consistent character-arc. Unless you assume an immortal character (as Miller did in A Canticle for Liebowitz), or give intensive echoes of dead characters in later chapters, you are stuck. But KSR solves the problem by making the same characters reappear in different incarnations -- with different personalities, needs and joys, to be sure, but nonetheless the same at their cores.

Because the reader comes to care for the repeating "souls" of these characters, and hopes that they will finally find a way not to screw up their karma (or whatever), the novel maintains a personal focus rather than merely a focus on the beautiful historical story itself.

_The Years of Rice and Salt_ is different from Robinson's other novels in that it isn't really science fiction. It's speculative fiction, certainly -- as any alternate history novel is, and the strong religious elements also suggest that categorization -- but its lyrical prose and philosophical/spiritual content reminded me much more of Hermann Hesse than of Robinson's sf contemporaries.
Robinson is a utopian, an unusual thing to be in this age of cynicism and irony. Many of the utopian works of the past have taken the form of the author, in narrative or expository form, describing the perfect society to the reader, often in the form of a kind of fictional guided tour. The implication of such works is that if only society were organized in the way the author envisioned, peace and prosperity and abundance would instantly result. Robinson's utopias (as articulated in the Mars books as well as this one) are different. Not only are they imperfect, but progress is extremely gradual, happening over hundreds and thousands of years. Only after centuries of work, setbacks, more work, fighting and wars, more work, catastrophic tragedies, and even more work does society advance to a point where human beings can live without the suffering that stems from scarcity and competition for resources. This pragmatic but fundamentally optimistic point of view, expressed through a narrative of rich cultures, dynamic characters, and epic history, somehow left me feeling that a kind of utopia - or at least significant progress towards such - was indeed possible. Robinson's suggestion that these are the years of rice and salt - the middle period of a Chinese woman's life, the period of work - is a call for all those who would live in a kinder and more stable world to take up whatever tools they have available and labor honestly for change.
While adhering to no one particular religious world view, _The Years of Rice and Salt_ is a deeply spiritual novel. It is set against a colorful and detailed backdrop of mostly Eastern cultures - China, Islam, Japan, early America, India - and explores themes of religious belief and practice in many cultures (with special attention to Buddhism and Islam), familial connections that have nothing to do with blood, and the inevitable corruption of idealistic religious traditions by the forces of dominator societies. Perhaps more importantly, however, the book portrays characters whose ultimately scientific examination of society and the physical world is a deeply religious activity. The false dichotomy of religion and science in contemporary America is broken down; for many of the characters, the honest exploration of creation is a devotional activity, one that deeply honors the sacredness of people and the world.
As beautiful and meaningful as the book is, it does have flaws. Though the first half has a lot of action and moves quickly, Robinson's descriptions of complicated hypothetical political dynamics start to drag in the second half of the novel. The final chapter, while containing some of the most vivid and beautiful narrative passages in the book, spends too much time on the main character's ruminations on his life and the nature of existence. Though executed with clarity and grace, I found myself disappointed to be told explicitly and obviously about all the ideas and themes carefully developed through the book's subtle narrative. Robinson puts in enough unique material and striking images to make the chapter worthwhile, though, and the ending is perfect - I can only think that he must have been planning it from the very first page.
As always, Robinson's style is epic, discursive, and lyrical, but there's something in this novel for every reader - vivid characterization, an intricate plot, poetic descriptions, complicated politics, sex and drugs, romance, strong women, mystics, gods, warfare, the birth of science, philosophy, technology theory, and much more. I highly recommend this novel to those whose faith in the possibility of a better world has been shaken: its message is eternal hope, even as it allows itself to grieve deeply over tragedy. In the early twenty-first century, with its atmosphere of fear and suspicion, this may be one of the most important novels that will be written this decade.
Final note: I was surprised to see reviews here that claimed that the book had no overall story, that it was just the separate tales of the characters' incarnations. The overall tale is the one of the characters' successful work in building a more peaceful society. It's amusing and exciting to see them unknowingly referring back to and building on their previous incarnations' work. As a metaphor for human history, I think the device works wonderfully.

Imagine, for a moment, that western civilization not only did not evolve as we know it today, but that, in fact, it never existed at all. This intriguing speculation is the underlying premise of a novel which forces the reader to rethink all the assumptions with which we habitually evaluate the past--the "givens" through which we interpret events. Robinson presupposes that virtually all the inhabitants of Europe were wiped out by a plague in the fourteenth century and the continent left uninhabited. But this was not the end of the world, nor was it the end of learning and "progress." Life continued, but all the intellectual developments arose out of the Muslim states, China, India, and eventually the North America of the Native Americans.

Alternating workman-like prose with prose "poems" and, occasionally, stories and legends, Robinson crafts a fast-paced history of a different world, creating two characters who appear and reappear in different incarnations from 783 a. H. (after Hegira), roughly the late 14th century, to the present day. Keeping basically the same personalities, regardless of their incarnations, Bold Bardash (Bihari, Bistami, Butterfly, Bahram, etc.) and Kyu (Kokila, Kya, Katima, Kheim, etc.) travel through time, experiencing life under the Mongols, Indians, early Chinese emperors, Muslim leaders, and Japanese sailors during their discovery of the New World.

Some episodes are much more vivid, and ultimately more enlightening, than others, and as the cultures are brought to life, along with their different views of man's place in the universe, Robinson shows how the desire to impose one's own religion or beliefs on the outside world is the basis of some of the cruelest violence throughout history. Ultimately, the Great War, lasting sixty-seven years and costing one billion lives, pits the rulers of Dar al-Islam against the Travancori League (India), China, and the Hodenosaunee League (Native America).

While it is intriguing to contemplate alternative history, Robinson's goal--the alternative history of the entire world for the past six hundred years is an enormous subject, one which, because of its breadth and scope seems to lose focus and pace as the book progresses. And while the reincarnations of Bold and Kyu help to bridge many gaps and avoid some problems of character development, the device becomes a bit tired by the end. Still, in showing us how all aspects of our current knowledge might have developed in other societies if western civilization had not existed, Robinson goes a long way toward reducing intellectual arrogance and increasing empathy for other cultures. Despite the book's limitations, Robinson succeeds in creating an alternative history which offers much food for thought and considerable narrative excitement. Mary Whipple

How would the world be different if 99 percent of Europe had been wiped out by the Black Death?
Robinson's answer: It wouldn't.
Oh sure, there would be more European mosques, and someone else would get the chance to mistreat Native Americans, but hardly anything else changes.
So, caveat emptor when it comes to the major selling point of the book. Still, "The Years of Rice and Salt" is worth a look. Robinson focuses less on the events than the "souls" he follows through the centuries. The central characters -- "K" and "B" -- grow and change over time, and the history becomes a backdrop to their evolution. One minor problem: The characters almost always come back as a world shakers (or attendants to world shakers) and never as pig farmers or the store reviewers. That can be forgiven as dramatic license, though I hope this isn't how the universe works.
Anyway, these souls like to philosophize, which sometimes slows the book down but often leads to fascinating meditations on ideas like the role of women in Islam. Structurally, the book is written as a "Foundation"-series of vignettes, and some sections, like "The Alchemist," go on far too long, while others, like "Warp and Weft," are far too short. Robinson also takes shortcuts to bring this world roughly up to speed with our own, creating a super-scientist who apparently invents or discovers the scientific method and nearly every advance between 1400 and 1700 in our time. The focus on Islam, China and India means Africa and South America are ignored.
And, as stated before, we're left with a world basically similar to our own. This is a problem endemic to the whole alternate history genre: Instead of creating a different past, writers usually take historical events and reshuffle them (e.g. Hitler rises to power in the South instead of Germany in Harry Turtledove's books). There's a thread of inevitability, even pessimism, running throughout these works. Triumphs and catastrophes are inevitable, no matter what ordinary people do. No room for free will; history has a plan already.
In any event, this is a thoughtful book, one that often overcomes its flaws when musing on larger themes. Robinson ought to follow it up with a book like "The Martians," which filled in some of the blanks of the Mars trilogy. I'd love to know more about particular areas or movements he didn't have space for.

Many alternate history stories tend to begin with a relatively simple "what if" premise and move from there: What if Abraham Lincoln hadn't been assassinated at the end of the Civil War? What if the Allies had lost World War II? What if the Cuban Missile Crisis had actually turned into World War III? In The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson proposes what may be one of the greatest "what ifs" of the genre: What if the Black Plague had wiped out virtually the entire population of Europe at the end of the 14th century and, as a result, modern Western civilization never arose? In the space of more than seven hundred pages Robinson tries to show how the following seven centuries of history would have evolved differently in such a world. Reading the novel, it's difficult to not admire the scope of the author's ambition, and I must say that he succeeded in maintaining my attention and interest over the course of such a long story. People who aren't as engaged by history or other cultures would probably not enjoy this book as much as I did, though. I must also say that The Years of Rice and Salt suffers from one overriding problem, and this is Robinson's questionable historical logic. He seems to take it as a given that despite the absence of the West, the world would basically still go down the road towards modernity and globalization; the pioneering technological, economic, and cultural achievements of Western civilization would simply happen elsewhere, done by other people. This is a huge assumption that Robinson doesn't justify very well. I personally believe that events like the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution occurred in the West due to a very unique confluence of circumstances, none of which existed in Central Asia or southern India, where Robinson places them instead. Perhaps the fact the author had to cover so much ground so quickly accounts for this problem; if he had developed this world over the course of a trilogy likes his Mars series, for instance, it might be a little more clear how Travancore became the center of this industrial revolution, or even how the Indians of North America survived their contact with the Muslims in the East and the Chinese/Japanese in the West. Despite the fact that the brilliance of its ideas are not quite matched by the actual execution of the story, The Years of Rice and Salt is still a fascinating thought experiment that deserves at least a look.

I commend the imagination of Kim Stanley Robinson in turning out one of the most creative ideas for a major novel in years. This is a sci-fi-flavored telling of what human history might have been like had the Black Death of the 14th century wiped out 99% of Europe's population. What remains is a world divided into two competing spheres of influence: China in all its glory, and the Islamic culture in its ambition. Robinson follows the next eight centuries as humanity recovers from this devastation, and we read on to discover industrialization coming several centuries later than it did in our time (and arriving first in India, no less). We watch the unfolding of a terrible mechanized war that encompasses virtually all of humanity and decides whether it is the east or west (or neither...) who will reign globally-supreme. In this novel, the Chinese colonize North America, Muslims move into Europe, and unified American Indians elevate themselves to technological standards unknown to them in our timeline.

These chapters are framed by an interesting device: reincarnation. Our protagonists are a trio of souls who are born again and again from China to the Near East, to the San Francisco Bay region, France, Japan, and Istanbul, and so that we can identify them in each incarnation, they keep the same first letter of their names each time.

The Years of Rice And Salt is full of excitement and intellectual stimulation, yet it also drags in more than a few chapters. But still, what Robinson has accomplished is a fine novel indeed.

KSR presents people grappling with the big questions over millennia, while integrating into his plot an impressive range of insights from religious, cultural, political, and social history. Happening upon this work in the midst of studying Islam, it arrived at a perfect moment for me. KSR blends an astonishing amount of scholarship into his story but stays for the most part with how ideas have an impact upon the individual as well as the group. Trading off between earthly reincarnations of the "jati" group and brief scenarios with them yet another time in the bardo, this framework allows readers to learn along with KSR's appealing characters how to better one's self and those around us. Subtly, the characters' views move into more modern and skeptical bases as the centuries go on. Familiar inventions and battles occur, all the while tinged with the difference for us as readers effected largely from "our" Western-dominated absence from his global narrative.
His humanism and skepticism against totalitarian and oppressive systems keep the wheel turning through a well-told tale. You lament the passing of nearly every main character, and the unpredictability of their incarnations adds tension and poignancy to themore intimate scenes. Sometimes, however, too much goes by in one character's long life to make much of it stick except in the more detailed vignettes. KSR's own grasp of historiography makes for great intellectual fodder, but it can be a bit clunky as presented in the latter chapters of the book by "talking heads." Then again, these ideas are discussed at academic conferences, so perhaps their erudition and airless quality fits!
The blend of Native American, Islamic, Buddhist, Sufi, and Indian mentalities proves a fascinating thought-experiment while Judaism and Christianity have largely succumbed. I would have liked to have had a glimpse of the surviving two other monotheisms and how their remnant fared, as well as a depiction of Zott [Rom/Gypsies], Armenians, and more of the Africans and Aozhou [Australia]. But the book is long enough that you'll be entertained and educated in plenty as it is. His penultimate reflections of teaching in a university much like the one in KSR's own town serve as a thoughtful valediction upon the effect of students upon a professor. Although a bit long-winded in places, this actually adds verisimilitude to a novel concerned with how we wrestle-- stumbling, defiant, giddy, weary or blustering--against the gods' obstacles or the universe's indifference to improve our existence despite the fates and our own inevitable deaths.

The title of Kim Stanley Robinson's current work, recently released in mass market paperback, refers to an old Chinese list of the stages of a woman's life. The years of rice and salt are that period between childbearing and old age when one's knowledge and wisdom mature, preparing one to guide succeeding generations.
Mr. Robinson's characters, however, pursue their wisdom not across one life but many. They are members of a "jati," a sort of family of souls who reincarnate together as they travel the rugged road to enlightenment. He places them in an alternate historical context in which Christian civilization has been wiped out by the Black Death, to be replaced by the world of Islam. However, the Muslims still have a major rival to total world domination-the Chinese empire, and it is the teetering balance of power between these two that serves as the backdrop for his story.
The book focuses on two main souls. The first arrives as Bold, a captain of Temur the Lame who is banished from his people for having entered a plague-decimated city. Wandering westward, he is eventually captured by Muslim sailors, who sell him into slavery to the Chinese. One of his fellow travelers is a 12-year-old African boy, Kyu, who is brutally castrated by his new masters.
The pair then journeys across time, space and dimensions as Mr. Robinson explores the nature of the concept of inevitability. Reincarnation is, in most of its variations, subject to strict, immutable rules the essence of which is that one's actions in one life determine one's situation in the next. Yet what if, he ponders, a soul were to rebel against those strictures-and against the other belief of afterlife existence that the gods will punish those who disobey divine dictates?
Woven around this esoteric question is a more mundane one. Much of the knowledge that brought Europe out of the Dark Ages came from the Islamic world, including writings from antiquity that were suppressed as pagan and heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. If that knowledge had been readily available to inquiring minds, might modern technology have arisen sooner?
Finally, the inevitable discussion of the relationship between religion and science adds a third layer to this complex story that spans centuries and cultures.
This is a rich and richly written epic that raises more than a few important issues for discussion. The detailed development of this alternate world is firmly and delightfully extrapolated, and there is a wicked iron in having the culture of medieval Europe come to be the focus of speculation by archaeologists who have no real means of grasping the underlying motivations for many of its elements.
What this reader could have lived without were the more than a little mind-numbing lectures on the forces of history and historical imperatives that grew longer and more frequent as the end of the book approached. The action of the plot is sufficient to bring these issues to mind, and giving characters summations didn't enhance that. Those intelligent enough to get the point don't need them, and those who miss the point will likely just skim over them.
Nevertheless, THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT is a complex and masterfully constructed speculation on what might have been, populated with characters whose gradual spiritual growth is as important and element as the development of their world. For those whose taste runs to something a bit more substantial than SF Lite, it's a definite must-have.

This is a complex and challenging novel, covering a group of related characters through multiple lifetimes, over centuries from about 1400 to the present, in an elaborate alternate history in which the black plague almost completely wiped out the population of Europe, preventing the rise of European culture and religion to world dominance. Definitely not a lite read; it takes effort to follow Robinson's alternate history, accompanied by alternate geography and chronology. But readers who have a taste for serious and thoughtful SF will be rewarded for their efforts.

Some highlights from the alternate history: (Contains some spoilers for early sections) about 1400, a mutated and incredibly potent version of the black plague wipes out most of Europe, eliminating it as a political or military force. Christianity is eliminated as a civilization, and the later events are dominated by Chinese and Islamic culture. Muslims, some of them refugees from mainstream Islam, gradually repopulate Europe. Meanwhile, a Ming expedition, outfitted to invade Japan, gets caught in a strong Eastern current, misses Japan entirely, and winds up in San Francisco Bay. The expedition is still very much a success, especially when it travels South and discovers the rich mines of Peru. A later Chinese fleet succeeds in conquering Japan.

A group of reformist Muslims, chased by more traditional sects, sails west from Normandy and discovers Manhattan. The Iriquois federation, becoming aware of the presence of alien cultures on both the West and East coasts, forms the North American tribes into a great union, capable of keeping the outsiders largely restricted to the coasts and holding the interior of the continent.

There is more, covering alternate histories of the Industrial Revolution, WWI, and the dicovery of fission, up to an age that look like roughly the present, with increasing global cooperation and, presumably, an alternate Francis Fukuyama to announce the End of Alternate History.

At key events in this timeline, we meet repeatedly the same group of people, recognized by keeping the same initials. The key figures are:

B - A spiritual seeker, frequently a Buddhist clergyman.
I - A scientist or intellectual, fascinated with acquiring knowledge.
K - The activist of the group, at first seeking revenge, at other times power, and ultimately social transformation.

All of these are followed through various lives and deaths, meeting up repeatedly in the Bardo, the between life area of judgment from Tibetan Buddhism. There are some minor accompanying characters, such as S, which is generally a feckless or irresponsible person, often of considerable authority, but these are the main ones.

Robinson has created numerous striking characters from these broad templates: a soldier in Tamerlane's army who ultimately becomes a slave in China, a protective tiger, a servant boy caught in the floods of a Chinese California, a young woman growing up in post-war Islamic France, and many more. It's really a virtuoso trick to fit 600 years of alternate history into one book while still having real characters to live the history, something Robinson has accomplished superbly.

Remember the Mars Trilogy? Superb science fiction book, but with a bit of a difference - there was a lot more social interaction than in your average hard core SF novel. Not character interaction, but the interaction of the different philosophies. It made the book.
This book has the same sort of Robinson twist. On the face of it, it is a book dealing with the premise that the Black Death had been a bit more deadly, wiping out Europeans and leaving the world to the Chinese, the Indians and the Arabs, and a few other odds and sods.
Robinson's twist is that the major characters keep on returning every hundred years or so, being reincarnated higher or lower according to their previous lives. This gives a sense of continuity to the grand thousand year epic from Middle Ages to modern times.
Some might find a little more philosophy than they like, but those who enjoyed his Mars books will probably like this one too, as there is about the same amount. It also gives the thoughtful reader something to chew on while progressing through the otherwise straightforward tale.
I enjoyed it, and kept reading to find out what would happen next incarnation. A bit of a quirky classic.

To many alternate histories fall into two categories "What if the South Won the Civil War?" or "What if the Nazis Won World War II?"

In this case "What if Europe were decimated by the Black Death?"; now there are times when the story (which is very long) is in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own narrative. There are even times when you need a rolodex to keep track of all of the characters (there are sites on the internet dedicated to this) the simplest advice in this case is to follow closely the characters starting with "B", "P" and "K"

Overall-If I had read this a year ago when I expected everything I read to be a great work of literature I would have given this a much lower rating, however in the little while since I have had a revelation I was entertained and my intelligence wasn't insulted so I had a good time.

This is one of the best alternative history novels I've read in quite some time. We've seen the premise before -- what if the Black Death that struck Europe in the 14th century wiped out 99.9% of the population instead of "only" one-third? -- but it's what Stan does with it that makes this a book to read slowly and then re-read. The first section is about Bold, a common soldier in the Golden Horde, who is one of the first to discover the desolation of the Magyar Plain and the emptiness of the lands to the west of it. He has his own adventures, though, being sold into slavery and ending up working in a restaurant in Hangzhou, and then becoming a groom for the emperor. When Bold meets his unexpected end, we discover one of the principal themes behind the book: What happens in the bardo, the anteroom to the reincarnative process. Then we meet Kokila, a low-caste Indian girl who tends to take matters into her own hands. (Back to the bardo.) Bistami is a young Sufi who meets a friendly tiger, then becomes a confident of the Emperor Akbar, then finds himself in Mecca, and then journeys to al-Andalus (what used to be Spain) where he becomes part of the Moslem resettlement of Europe. This is one of the best sections of the book. A few centuries later, Admiral Kheim leads a Chinese invasion fleet against Japan, but they get blown far to the east and discover the New World. What's more, they make it back home and this opens the way for China to take the exploitative role in America that Spain took in our own history. Later, in Samarqand, a failed alchemist and a Tibetan glassblower kick-start the Age of Science -- and much good it does them in the short run. (Back to the bardo, of course.) The scene shifts briefly to the Onondaga and their League, and to a charismatic samurai who comes among them, but then it's back to China. The book goes on this way, mostly alternating narratives with different sets of characters who are mostly the same people recycled, to see if they can get things right this time around. And there are revolts against the gods when the reincarnated finally have had enough. One of my other favorite sections is about the Kerala of Travancore and the foundation of the Indian League, which is also the beginning of decline for Islamic civilization. The description of the Travancori soldiers dancing in ranks is marvelous. Actually, I didn't find the last quarter of the book so appealing, with its sixty-seven-year "Long War," and what comes after, but that's just me. The story ends in what would be the mid-21st century in our history -- but even with his closing sentence, Stan reminds us that the bardo is always there.

I really enjoyed this novel, which starts with an alternate history setting but combines it with strong characters and an interesting exploration of Buddhist and Isalmic metaphysics / theology.
Because of the structure of the novel (taking place across 500+ years) it may take a few chapters to figure out exactly what the real premise is -- the impression you'll get on the back is of a standard alternate history novel, and this is not the sort of political/military novel that say, Harry Turtledove writes.
It is still likely to appeal to most alt.hist readers -- the exception being hardcore military-fiction fans, as the action in the novel isn't of the "big battles sort." And it's sufficiently conceptual and character driven that it will very likely appeal to sci-fi fans who aren't alternate history readers.
I hadn't read any other books by Kim Stanley Robinson, but this one convinced me to pick up Red Mars.

Here is an excellent alternate history that delves into a world where European civilization is destroyed by the Plague. It spans the time period from the Middle Ages to modern times.

This world is all in all pretty plausible. The Islamic world essentially fills the vaccuum left by the destruction of Europe and competes with China, India, and to a lesser extent those we call American Indians. To tie events together over such a long time, Robinson uses an interesting tool. He assumes reincarnation exists and has a group of souls come back to Earth over time as various key players. While this mechanism is not perfect, it is more often than not useful in binding together what a somewhat unrelated short stories.

That all said, I agree with Michael Clawson's critique. My understanding is that the loss of population from the Plague was a key spark in causing the social and technological advances in Europe. Mr. Robinson has this alternate world advance at nearly the same pace technologically and only moderately slower socially. Doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me. Where is the incentive for China to make more efficient tools when theres a huge surplus of people? And why would India become a relatively free society when the status quo hasnt been changed much? I think there could be decent explanations for this. Unfortunately, Robinson doesnt really delve into them much.

One of the nice things about alternate history is that you can see the importance of a given factor if it is removed. This book doesnt take advantage of that very well. This alternate world seems to follow our timeline too closely. There are major technological advances in the Middle Ages in Afghanistan simmilar to those in our Europe of the same time. The Chinese and Arabs colonize the Americas at about the same time period as Europe did in our world. There is an epic Moslem/China war set at about the time of our World War I. It even has trench warfare! So Mr. Robinson seems to be telling us (I believe unintentionally) that Europe doesnt really matter! Im not buying that. Not at all.

One final (and minor) critique. The author hints at there having been a residual European culture. I think it would have been helpful if Robinson threw his reincarnating characters into Plague ridden Europe. Perhaps they could have been in a nomadic grouping in France searching for safety or a small village in Northern Scotland that managed to survive. As best as I can tell the only Europeans Robinson identifies are what appears to be a caveman in Hungary in the very beginning and references to a "nature preserve" on an English island in the 20th Century. Showing what happened in Europe could have added depth to this story. Not a big problem though. I just would have like to have seen it.

This is pretty good alternate history. Not good enough that I would likely reread the book. But I'll certainly come back and skim certain portions!

Being a stubborn Taurean, I almost never give up on a book, no matter how it may fail to match my mood or expectations. So, it is a rare thing for me to report that I couldn't finish Kim Stanley Robinson's THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT. Why not? Although premised on the fascinating possibilities of alternative history -- a world in which "the West" quite simply doesn't exist, having been wiped out by the Black Death of the 14th century -- the novel is ultimately predictable and boring.
I love historical fiction -- or rather, the idea of historical fiction. Few writers can pull it off. My favorites in the genre are Robert Graves's Claudius books and Marguerite Yourcenar's MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN. Keeping in mind that this is mass-market fiction, my expectations were low. It's not that I can't appreciate a little pulp fiction (I've been known to curl up warmly with the likes of Anne Rice, who has a great historical imagination), or that Robinson hasn't done his research (the novel is quite impressive in historical detail). The problem is that Robinson lacks the imagination to create a truly "other" world.
It for this reason that the earliest chapters of the book are the most successful. Here, Robinson doesn't have to imagine, he can simply insert his characters into the more or less fully developed worlds of medieval China and the dar-al-Islam (comprising Turkey, the Middle East, and central and southeast Asia -- plus the fictional Muslim Europe, which is never fully developed). One can even bear with the predictable way he handles the near simultaneous discovery of the Americas from the "East" and the "West", which draws on recent notorious claims that the Chinese might have visited the Pacific coast of North and South America during the Middle Ages and possibly have influenced the cultures there. The novel really loses steam, however, when key historical figures and events from actual Western history turn up in not-so-subtle Eastern guises. The Scientific Revolution is transplanted to Samarkand and the Industrial Revolution to India. I quit reading when World War I, complete with trench warfare, broke out between China and the Islamic nations.
I do have one soft spot for this novel: Robinson's use of the Buddhist concept of the Bardo. The main characters meet in limbo here after death and are reborn in the same "Jati", meaning that they touch each others' lives in incarnation after incarnation. Also, Robinson's Sufi characters are quite well developed and interesting, and they may serve to introduce some readers to another, less familiar face of Islam.

The departure point for this alternate history novel is the black plague of the dark ages. Robinson imagines a history in which all the inhabitants of Europe perish in the plague. His alternate history describes how humanity and civilization advance guided by the influence of the three major Eastern philosophies: Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Robinson uses a unique device to allow us to follow the evolution of humanity over time. We follow a group of souls who live in different historical eras. After they die, they meet in the bardo, or afterlife. They discuss their progress as souls, and then are reincarnated. In each subsequent time era, each soul's struggles allows the reader to experience how history might have been different without the influence of European civilization.

Robinson's novel is short on plot, and long on discussions of philosophy, politics, morality and mythology. There are long descriptions and comparisons of each of the three Asian religions.

I must confess, this novel was a struggle for me. However, if you have an interest in Eastern philosophy and religion, you might enjoy this novel.

The concept of this book was very intriguing, so I purchased it. The main idea was that the Black Death in the Middle Ages decimated Western Europe, leaving the world to be divided between the Moslems and the Chinese. I expected a rather straightforward history based upon this premise, so I was rather surprised to get a very long book that dealt with the history almost as an afterthought. The main function seemed to be concentrated on the idea of reincarnation, and various religious and philosophical concepts. There was just too much of that, and too little story to make this work consistently interesting. The last section, for example, I found entirely superfluous. That being said, the writing was very well done, and the characterizations excellent. It's not the book it purports to be, so be warned in advance. You may like it, or you may hate it.

I really liked this book. The way in which Robinson builds the chain of events after the Fall of Europe may seem a little forced, but, since we don't really know exactly why it was that Western Europe acquired its technological edge over the rest of the world, we don't know exactly how accurate Robinson's scenario really is. Also, the highly localized nature of the plague that annihilates Europe but leaves the Middle East undamaged is pretty far fetched. But readers that are bothered by this should remember that they're not reading an article by a historian speculating on what probably would have happened if Europe had been wiped out in the late 14th century, they're reading a NOVEL, a work of fiction. In this case the historical development of his hypothetical world depends on the plot, not the other way around.
Nevertheless, if we put aside that fact, this is truly a great novel. The characters are great, and the use of reincarnation provides a wonderful way to interconnect all the different time periods.
I agree with other reviewers who say that the first stories in the book are the best, but that doesn't necessarily means that the others are bad. I admit they do get a little preachy, but anyone who has read Robinson's Mars novels will recognize what I'm talking about. If it didn't bother you there, then you should have no problem with this one.

This is a compelling "What If..." novel. Kim Stanley Robinson covers over 700 years of an alternate history dominated by the Chinese and Islam. The novel is made up of a number of short stories at various points in time dating from the Great European Plague to modern times and beyond. Using a simple naming convention, the lives of the characters are somewhat easily connected by the reader from story to story, as they are reincarnated, and we follow their journey through the "bardo" into future lives on Earth.
Kim Stanley Robinson draws the reader into the epoch by using the writing style of the era or culture. The interludes in the bardo are humorous while also thought provoking as the characters attempt to understand their lives just ended and set goals for the ones to come.
Indeed Buddhist philosophy and reincarnation feature prominently in these stories, and are a counterbalance in some sense to the extremism of Islamic beliefs, although Robinson goes to lengths to show that pure Islamic tenants are not in tune with the bastardizations wrought upon it by the religious zealots.
Scientific advances and discoveries progress at a different pace in this alternate history, and references are made to many familiar technologies, but what is not mentioned is also as telling. As a hard science writer I suspect Robinson especially enjoyed brainstorming in this area. Certainly Islamic cultures that dominate Robinson's world are less curious than Western civilizations have been, and this has a profound impact on the path of history, and provides the Chinese with an edge enhanced by their great numbers.
Robinson also introduces us to other cultures and people that emerge as primary players in the new world order he creates. We see how Indian and native American cultures evolve and influence the political and scientific balance.
Certainly Robinson has his own thoughts about these things, and a liking for utopian societies and Buddhism, yet he is not heavy handed with his views, and allows for the reader to formulate his or her own.
All in all, this is an ambitious undertaking and one that is very well done and researched. Those familiar with Robinson's past novels will find much that is familiar, while he tells a story that goes in directions he has not ventured before. Those new to Robinson will hopefully also look to discover more from one of the best writers in Science Fiction today.

As the title itself explained my point of view: it could've been better...

It started very well, with the two characters from Mongolia. And then Europe fell into the abyss due to the black death, consuming 99.99% of the total European populations. Mr. Robinson's imagination on a world without Europe was excellent. Thus, the only remaining powers in the world: the Chinese, the Islamic world, the North American Indians and the Indians were conquering the world without Europe at the end. Imagine that steam engines not invented by James Watt, but by the Indians. Or, nuclear potential founded by a modernly-inclined Muslim Arab woman in the western Europe. Wow! What a powerful other-dimension-what-if.

Since I am basically a history fan, I was surprised that the author packed so much information (science, geography, sociology, anthropology, phylosophy, religion, etc.) matters into his novel. Most of them are quite accurate! However, packing so much info into such a "short" book (700+ pages) will not do any good but to blur the main plots. Moreover, I agree with some other reviewers, that Mr. Robinson drifted too much into unrelated and uninteresting subjects. Some issues were dealt into phylosophical details, which I found irrelevant to the topic. If he had stopped writing some 200 pages shorters, or had sticked to his main plots, it would have been one of the best historical / sci-fi novel ever written.

Alas, it did not happen. And I ended up brooding having to give a four-star rating. Still a very good read, though not the best.

The Years of Rice and Salt is quite an undertaking... how would the world have been different if the Black Plague killed off most of Europe and hence severly limiting the influence of Western Europe on the rest of the world.

Robinson, as he does in his other books, is quite thorough in putting it all together into a cohesive story that is well-thought out and filled with detail and explanation. Unfortunately, it bogs this book down. I forced myself thru the last third of the book.

The mini-stories that are linked together are a mixed bag. Some are a delight to read while others are mind-numbing. Discovering their link as you read the book is interesting. The chain of events is quite believeable and thought-provoking.

This book is a good read but might take you a while to finish if you don't carry enough momentum into the second half of the book.

Until this book, I'd never really delved into the alternate history genre, but a review on Salon.Com was enough to get me intrigued, and once the paperback became available I knew immediately that I'd want to read it.
I was not disappointed. But I recognize that this is not a book for everyone. The storytelling is not exactly linear, as characters are followed from one reincarnation to another, but the cyclical mode of storytelling here is in keeping with Buddhism as one of the major forces in the world-without-Europe that Robinson envisions. The only reason this might be seen as a flaw is because Robinson's novel is approached by readers who inevitably have a distinctly Western (linear) view of time and storytelling; the expect a beginning, a middle and an end, whereas Robinson offers a long walk through a never-ending story in which the names of the characters (at least) change from one part of the book to the next.
I was left not just wanting more, but wanting to visit the world Robinson created in his novel.